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r SB AND CURB OF OUR NATIONAL 
TROUBLES. 



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SPEECH 



OF 



HON. GEO. W. JULIAN 



OF INDIANA, 



Delivered in the House of Representatives, Tuesday, January 14, 1862. 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 

TERS, COB. OF SECOND & INDIANA AVENUE, THIRD FLOOR. 

1862. 



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SPEECH 



The House being iu Committee of the Whole on the state 
of the Union — 

Mr. JULIAN said; 

Mr. Chairman: Every thinking; man natu- 
rally surveys the field of politics from his own 
peculiar stand-poiut, and reaches his conclu- 
sions by the help of his own methods of thought. 
Considerable diversities of judgment are there- 
fore inevitable, even among the disciples of the 
same faith, while uniformity of opinion, how- 
ever desirable in matters essential, is of far less 
consequence than perfect freedom of thought. 
The discovery and practical acceptance of the 
Truth should be our grand aim ; and all har- 
mony among men, secured by the sacrifice of 
this aim, is at once the sure prophecy and nat- 
ural parent of discord. Since free thought and 
its free utterance must be the condition prece- 
dent of all progress, it may be safe to affirm 
that he is a better soldier in the army of reform 
who conscientiously battles even for false prin- 
ciples, than he who meanly accommodates him- 
self to that which has numbers on its side, 
through a cowardly fear of dissent and divis- 
ion. 

I propose, sir, somewhat in the spirit of these 
observations, to speak of the war in which our 
country is involved. In the name of a constit- 
uency of freemen, I shall say what I believe 
ought to be said, in the present stage of our na- 
tional troubles ; and I shall do so without favor 
or fear. This is a war of ideas, not less than 
of armies, and no servant of the Republic should 
march with muffled drums against the foe. So 
far as my own personal or political fortunes are 
concerned, I shall take no thought for the mor- 
row. This is no time for any public man to 
confer with flesh and blood. The fabric of free 
Government, reared by our fathers, is in flames. 
In the opinion of many, the great Model Re- 



public of the world is in the throes and spasms 
of death. This is one of the grand judgment- 
days of history, and whoever believes in the 
government of the world by a Providence will 
interpret this tremendous conflict as the voice 
of Jehovah, calling the nation to account for 
its sins, and teaching us, through the terrible 
lesson of civil war, that "the unjust thing shall 
not prosper." Sir, in a crisis so transcendency 
appalling as the present, so grandly solemnized 
by tokens of national retribution, the deepest 
moral convictions of every man should find a 
voice, and nothing should be more coveted 
than perfect self-renunciation and singleness of 
purpose in the eudeavor to save the life of the 
Government and the liberty of the people. 

Mr. Chairman, the cause of this gigantic con- 
spiracy against the Constitution and laws is the 
topic which meets us at the very threshold of 
any intelligent thought or action on our part. 
What produced this infernal attempt upon the 
nation's life? What is it that has called into 
deadly conflict from the walks of peace more 
than a million of men, brethren and kindred, 
and the joint heirs of a common heritage of 
liberty? What power is it that has run through 
the entire gamut of ordinary villainies, and at 
last turned national assassin ? These questions 
demand an answer. Shall we postpone it, as 
some of our loyal men advise us, till peace 
shall be restored, and the Union re-established? 
Sir, this would be to affront common sense, 
and surrender our mightiest weapons to the 
rebels. The solemn issue of national life or 
death must, be disposed of upon its merits, and 
we should bring ourselves face to face with it, 
and with every question fairly connecting itself 
with the great controversy. If we expect the 
favor of God, we must lay hold of the conscience 
of our quarrel, instead of keeping it out of 



sight. The revolutionary struggle of our fathers 
was preceded by the most exhaustive discus- 
sion of the causes which produced it, and which 
"a decent respect for the opinions of man- 
kind '* required them" to declare." They based 
their justification before the world upon great 
primal truths, which they declared to be self- 
evident, and they appealed to the Supreme 
Judge of the world for the rectitude of their 
intentions. Thus only could they have con- 
quered. There was no vital question which 
they sought to ignore or postpone. So should 
it be with us to-day. Stern work has to be 
done, and our appeal must be to the enlight- 
ened judgment and roused moral sense of the 
people. The cause and the cure of our troubles 
are inseparably connected. This rebellion is 
not a stupendous accident. It is not an eccen- 
tric growth, disowning the ordinary law of 
cause and effect; and we must not " cut the 
thread of history from behind it," either to 
accommodate traitors or timid loyal men. It 
has not burst into life without any known 
parentage, but is the legitimate child of the 
foul ancestry from which it has sprung. It has 
a discoverable genesis, and the time has come 
to explore it. 

It is argued, in very respectable quarters, 
that the slavery question has nothing to do with j 
our present troubles. This rebellion, we are I 
told, is the crowning fruit of the heresy of State 
rights, as expounded by some of the leading j 
statesmen of our country, and the issue in- j 
volved, therefore, is simply the old one between 
the Federal and Democratic parties. Sir, I ; 
hope we shall not be misled by this fallacy. I j 
trust our detestation of this rebellion, and of 
the dogma on which it assumes to be based, 
will not drive us into a false position. I think 
there are such things as State rights, notwith- j 
standing the efforts of rebels to make them a I 
cloak for treason. I believe there is such a 
principle as State sovereignty, recognised, while 
limited, by the Federal Constitution itself. On ! 
this question I subscribe, in the main, to the J 
teachings of James Madison, and with him 1 
decline the consequences which slavehclding j 
nullifiers have sought to deduce from his con- 1 
stitutional opinions. And, heartily as I con- 1 
demn and denounce the dogma of secession, I 
believe it to be no more pernicious than that 
other heresy which has steadily aimed to swal 
low up the States, and all the departments of 
the Government, in the vortex of one centra- 
lized Federal power. Sir, no warnings of in- 
spired or uninspired man were ever more com- 
pletely justified by time than the warnings of 
Thomas Jefferson against Federal usurpation > 
and the principles declared in the case of Dred 
Scott, if practically recognised and accepted, 
would as perfectly accomplish the overthrow of 
the Government of our fathers as it would be 
possible to do by the most extravagant theory 
of the right of individual States to secede from 
the Union. 



It was not jealousy of the Federal power that 
prompted the cotton States to secede, but their 
inability loDger to rule the national Govern- 
ment in the interest of slavery. It was not 
jealousy of the aggressions of the State govern- 
ments that gave birth to the Dred Scott de- 
cision, but the influence of that same slave 
power, sitting like a throned monarch on the 
supreme bench, in perverting the powers of 
the Government. Whether the Constitution 
has been made to dip towards centralization or 
State rights, the disturbing element has uni- 
formly been slavery. This is the unclean 
spirit that from the beginning has needed ex- 
orcism. Without it there were not defects 
enough in the system of Government which 
our fathers left us to endanger its suocess, or 
seriously to disturb its equilibrium. To charge 
this rebellion upon secession, and not slavery, 
is like charging the domination of slavery itself 
upon the invention of the cotton-gin. Without 
the previous existence of slavery in the South- 
ern States, cotton would not have been king. 
Instead of one all-engrossing pursuit, there 
would have been a healthy variety of enter- 
prises, multiplied objects of interest, all con- 
ducted by educated labor, and stimulated by 
remuneration and the influence of competition. 
Slavery founded the kingdom of cotton, and 
secured its present ascendency under the mo- 
tive power of fresh lands and new labor-saving 
machinery, which it employed as the occasion 
for putting forth new life ; and slavery is now 
seeking to found an empire of rebel sovereign- 
ties, in the name of State rights, which it uses 
as the convenient but perverted instrument of 
its purpose. 

Mr. Chairman, when I say that this rebellion 
has its source and life in slavery, I only repeat 
a simple truism. No fact is better understood 
throughout the country, both by loyal and dis- 
loyal men. It is accepted by the people as if 
it were an intuition. And the germ of our 
troubles, it must be confessed, is in the Consti- 
tution itself. These may seem ungracious 
; words, and will certainly win no applause; 
| but it is best to face the truth, however unwel- 
I come, and, if possible, profit by its lesson. I 
i think it was Granville Sharpe who said that 
i "God, in founding the universe, made it cer- 
tain that every bargain with the devil should 
weaken the man who makes it." Sir, had our 
fathers, in the beginning, seen this truth in 
the light of the terrible facts which bear witness 
; to it to day, this horrid legacy of civil war 
would not have been entailed upon their chil- 
dren. On this subject I am not without very 
high authority, and I prefer to quote it: 

" In the Articles of Confederation there was 
! ' no guarantee for the property of the slave- 
1 holder; no double representation of him in 
' the Federal councils; no power of taxation; 
' no stipulation for the recovery of fugitive 
' slaves. But when the powers of government 
1 came to be delegated to the Union, the 



'South — that, is, South Carolina and Georgia — j The first fatal concession to this rebel power 
' refused their subscription to the parchment | prepared the way for a second, and the history 
' till it should be saturated with the infection of 



' slavery, which no fumigation could purify, no 
1 quarantine could extinguish. The freemen 
' of the North gave way, and the deadly venom 
' of slavery was infused into the Constitution of 
' freedom." 

So said John Quincy Adams, and he pro- 
nounced the bargain thus made by our fathers 
'"irjrally and politically vicious."' This bar- 
gain is the fountain of all our disasters. South 
Carolina and Georgia loved slavery better than 
they loved the Union, and hence our union 
with them has proved ill-matched, unn, l ural, 
and calamitous. The Constitution received its 
life in concessions which slavery demanded as 
conditions of union, and slavery, from that mo- 
ment, has assumed to deal with the Constitution 
as its master. The rebels today in arms 
against the Government are the fit representa- 
tives of the rebels whom our fathers sought in 
vain to make loyal by concessions in the be- 
ginning. 

I do not say tl at tie founders of our Gov- 
verument are to be judged in the light of the 
terrible evils which have been the offspring of 
their mistake. We must view their action 
from their own point of vision, taking into 
the account their known opinions, wishes, and 
expectations. They regarded slavery with 
abhorrence. They would not allow the word 
slave, slavery, or even servitude, to be named 
in the Constitution. They believed the evil to 
be in the course of speedy decay and death. 
They forbid its introduction into all territory 
under national control. They took measures 
to cut off the foreign supply, the great artery 
of its life. Private emancipations were rapidly 
going on in all the States, under the influence 
of the Declaration of Independence, and the 
struggle for their own liberty. The conces- 
sions which they made, so emphatically con- 
demned by Mr. Adams, must be interpreted by 
these facts of history, which must ever vindi- 
cate their good intentions, and separate them 
from the compromisers of a later day. They 
thought they were simply yielding to slavery 
a transient sufferance, a brief hospitality, so 
that it might die and pass away ' ; decently and 
in order;'' and they did not dream that the 
evil thus abetted would treacherously demand 
perpetuity, and bid freedom to serve at its 
biack altar. It is not possible to believe that 
their bargain with slavery would ever have 
been made, had they foreseen the curses it has 
entailed upon the nation. Perfidiously laying 
hold of concessions generously made in its 
favor in the beginning, and too liberally re- 
peated afterwards, and unwilling at length to 
share even a divided empire with freedom, to 
whom it has turn' . a deaf ear and an averted 
face, it has systematically trampled the Consti- 
tution under its feet in its ruthless march to- 
wards absolute dominion over these States. 



prepared the way lor a second, and the history 
of its relations to the Government is a history 



of persistent but unavailing endeavors to pla 
cate its spirit, aud make it possible for the 
nation to live with it in peace. 

We gave it three large States, carved out of 
the Territory of Louisiana. The purchase of 
Florida was in obedience to its demands, and 
so was the prosecution of the Seminole and 
Florida wars. We assisted in expelling the 
red man from seven or eight States of the 
South, and forcing him into slavery, at the cost 
of many millions to the Government, so that 
the white man could enter with his peculiar in- 
stitution, where otherwise it was forbibden. In 
order to "save the Union" and propitiate men 
who subordinated it to negro slavery, we aban- 
doned the early policy of the fathers in 1820. 
In the same spirit, we consented to add an em- 
pire to slavery in the Southwest, in the annex- 
ation of Texas. We united in the prosecution 
of the Mexican war, well knowing that the ex- 
tension of slavery was its object. Under the 
threat of disunion in 1850, we abandoned the 
Wilmot proviso, and entered into a covenant 
that the Territories of Utah and New Mexico 
^should be received into the Union, with or with- 
out slavery as their people might determine ; 
thus tempting the South to apply this principle, 
which was done in 1854, to the territory saved 
by the Missouri restriction ; and by way of 
good measure, we furnished our rebel brethren 
with a fugitive slave act, which they had not 
seriously demanded as a condition of their loy- 
alty. The Missouri compromise, made to 
pacify slavery, was overthrown at its bidding, 
by the help of Northern votes, while the Dred 
Scott decision was the work, in part, of North- 
ern judges. Our hatred of the negro has 
cropped out in black codes in the free States 
which rival in villainy the worst features of the 
slave laws of the South. We have allowed sla- 
very to expurgate our literature and mutilate 
the school-books of our children, while even the 
grand instrumentalities of the Church — its 
Tract and Bible and Missionary and Sunday 
School associations — have submitted to its un- 
hallowed surveillance. We have consented to 
the suspension of the Constitution in the free 
States, through the fugitive-slave act of 1850, 
so far as the rights of trial by jury and habeas 
corpus are concerned ; and in the slave States, 
so far as the rights of locomotion and free 
speech relate to our own citizens, whom we 
meekly permit to be driven out by mobs, tarred 
and feathered, or hung like criminals, without 
cause. We have permitted both Houses of 
Congress, the Executive and Judicial Depart- 
ments of the Government, the Army and Navy, 
and our Foreign Diplomacy, to be controlled 
by this rebel interest, with the power all the 
while in our own hands to have done otherwise. 
Sir, it has ruled the Republic from the begin- 
ning. To pet and please it seems to have been 



6 



the work of our lives, and upon its rebel altar 
our public men, through long years of devil- 
worship, have offered their sacrifices. 

Nor has the Republican party, Mr. Chair- 
man, been wanting in tokens of forbearance 
towards the slave interest. While emphatically 
avowii-g an anti-slavery policy, to a certain ex- 
tent, it has been still more emphatic in disa 
vowing any purpose to go beyond its self-im 
posed limits. Nothing could exceed the per- 
sistency, emphasis, and fervor with which its 
editors, orators, and leaders have disowned the 
intention to interfere with slavery in the States 
of the South. They have protested, perpetually, 
and with uplifted hands, agaiust "abolition- 
ism," as if slavery had the stamp of divinity 
upon its brow. Denials, disclaimers, depreca- 
tions, virtual apologies to slavery, have been 
the order of the day with very many of our 
leaders; and so perfectly have we understood 
the art of prophesying smooth things, that mul- 
titudes have joined our organization, less 
through its known anti-slavery purpose, than 
the disavowal of any such purpose by those 
who have assumed to speak in its name. Great 
forbearance, moderation, and a studious defer- 
ence to the constitutional rights of slavery, have 
uniformly marked the policy of the Republican 
party, and would have prevented this rebellion, 
had it been possible through the spirit of con- 
ciliation. Its chosen President is a cool, cau- 
tious politician, of conservative antecedents and 
most kindly disposition. No fact was better 
known to the leaders of this rebellion than that 
their constitutional rights were perfectly safe 
in his hands. He so assured them, solemnly, 
in his inaugural address. He declared him- 
self in favor ofi enforcing the fugitive-slave act. 
He expressed his willingness to see the Consti- 
tution so amended as to tie up the hands of the 
people, forever, against the right to interfere 
with slavery in the States of the South ; and 
this proposition to incorporate the Leconipton 
Constitution into the Constitution of the United 
States was adopted by bath Houses of Congress, 
and submitted to them by the Peace Congress 
of last winter, inaugurated under Republican 
auspices, for the purpose of settling our nation- 
al troubles without a resort to war. When all 
these friendly overtures were defiantly spurned 
by the rebels, the President still clung to the 
hope of rescuing them from their madness. He 
still thought it his duty to Strive with them, 
through much forbearance, patient waiting, 

cautious diplomacy, and fatherly solicitude write their deep brand upon slavery as a Christ 
So systematically did he seem to go down into less outlaw, ami plead with us to smite it in the 
the valley of humiliation, that Bome of hie own Bame of God 



I 

Fort Sumter for no better reason than the send- 
ing of provisions to prevent our garrison from 
starvation, which he kindly assured them was 
the sole purpose of the expedition. 

Sir, this rebellion is a bloody and frightful 
demonstration of the fact that slavery and free- 
dom cannot dwell together in peace. The ex- 
periment has been tried, thoroughly, persever- 
ingly, and with a patience which defied despair, 
and has ( culminated in civil war. We have 
pursued the spirit of conciliation to the very 
gates of death, and yet the "irrepressible con- 
flict" is upon us, and must work out its needed 
lesson. I do not refer to our uniform forbear- 
ance towards slavery as a virtue. On the con- 
trary, this has only maddened and emboldened 
its spirit, and hastened an event which was sim- 
ply a question of time. We, in the free States, 
are not wholly guiltless, but I charge to the ac- 
count of slavery that very timidity and lack of 
manhood in the North through which it has 
managed to rule the nation. It has prepared 
itself for its work of treason by feeding upon 
the virtue of our public men and demoralizing 
the spirit of our people. As an argument 
against slavery, this rebellion is absolutely over- 
whelming. Nothing could possibly add to its 
irresistible force. Other arguments, however 
convincing to men of reflection, have not thus 
far been able to rouse the mass of our people 
to any very earnest opposition to slavery upon 
principle; but this argument must prevail with 
every man who is not a rebel at heart. This 
black conspiracy against the life of the Repub- 
lic, which has armed half a million of men in 
its work of treason, piracy and murder — this 
magnificent spectacle of total depravity made 
easy in real life, is the crowning flower and 
fruit of our partnership with the " sum of all 
villainies." All the crimes and horrors of this 
struggle for national existence cry out against 
it, and demand its utter political damnation. 
In the fires of the revolution which it has kin- 
dled, it has painted its own character with a 
pencil dipped in hell. The lives sacrificed in 
the war it has waged, the agonies of the battle- 
field, the bodies and limbs mangled and maimed 
for life, the widows and orphans made to mourn, 
the moral ravages of war, the waste of prop- 
erty, the burning of bridges, the robbery of forts, 
arsenals, navy-yards, and mints, the public 
.sanction and practice of piracy, a'.id the immi- 
nent peril to which the cause of free govern- 
ment throughout 'the world is subjected, all 



party friends, yielding to their impatience, pro 
nounced the first six weeks of his administra- 
tion simply a continuation of the policy of bis 
predecei Bor. livery conceivable expedient was 

ted to, to preserve the public pence, and 

with such ingenuity and steadfastness did the 

Executive pursue his policy in this direction. 

that tie rebels were at last obliged to fixe upon. 



Can 1 be mistaken, Mr. Chairman, in hold- 
ing slavery to this fearful reckoning? If so, 
why has there been no rebellion in any non- 
Blaveholding State? Why is it, that in the 
; centres of slavery treason is most ram- 
pant, while, as we recede into regions in which 
the Blaves are few and scattered, as in Western 
y ir; Mi.!, D la i:nd other border States, 



-we find the people loyally disposed towards the 
Union? These facts admit of hut one expla- 
nation. Kindred to them is the known charac- 
ter of the men who are conducting this rebel- 
lion. They tell us, as Vice President Stephens 
has done, that slavery is to be the corner-stonfi 
of the Southern Confederacy. Its leaders and 
their associates denounce Jefferson as a soph- 
ist, and the Declaration of Independence as 
"Red-Republican doctrine." They speak of 
the laboring millions of the free States as the 
" mud-sills of society," as a " pauper banditti," 
as "greasy mechanics and filthy operatives." 
They declare that "slavery, black or white, is 
right and necessary;" and this doctrine has 
been advocated by the Southern pulpit, and by 
the leading newspapers of Charleston, Rich- 
mond, and New Orleaus. They believe with 
Calhoun, that slavery is "the most safe and 
stable basis for free institutions in the world." 
They agree with Governor Hammond, that 
"slavery supersedes the necessity of an order 
of nobility, and the other appendages of a he- 
reditary system of government." They teach 
that "capital should own labor," and that 
"some men are born with saddles on their 
backs, and others booted and spurred to ride 
them by the grace of God." In the language 
of a distinguished rebel Senator, they " would 
spread the blessings of slavery, like the religion 
of our divine Master, to the uttermost ends of 
the earth." By these atrocious sentiments they 
are animated in their revolt against the Gov- 
ernment. Sir, does any man doubt that, should 
the rebels triumph over us, they will establish 
slavery in every free State ? Was not the im- J 
mediate cause of the revolt their inability to dif- 
fuse this curse under the Constitution ? They 1 
do not disguise the fact that they are fighting j 
for slavery. They tender us that special issue, i 
and have staked the existence of their idol upon 
the success of their arms against us. If we ; 
meet them at all, we necessarily meet them on j 
the issue they tender. If we fight at all, we i 
must fight slavery as the grand rebel. 

Do you tell me that the question involved in , 
this war is simply one of Government or no ! 
Government? I admit it; but I say the pre- 
vious question is slavery or freedom; or rather, 
it is the same question stated in different words. 
Slavery and treason, in this struggle, are identi- 
cal. It is slavery which to-day has the Gov- 
ernment by the throat, and thus thrusts upon 
us the issue of its life or death. Do you say 
that the preservation of the Union must be 
kept in view as the grand purpose of the war 
on our part? I admit it; but I say that noth- 
ing but slavery has brought the Union into 
peril. Its whole career, as I have shown, has 
been a perpetual conspiracy against the Con- 
stitution, crowned at last by a deadly stab at 
its life. Am I told that this is a war for the 
life and liberty of a nation belonging chiefly 
to the white race, and not a war for the eman- 
cipation of black men ? I frankly agree to it ; 



but I insist that our national life and liberty 
can only be saved by giving freedom to all, 
and that all loyal men, therefore, should favor 
emancipation. Shall the nation be sacrificed 
rather than break the chains of the slave? 
Shall we madly attempt to carry on the war as 
if slavery had no existence? Shall we delude 
ourselves by mere phrases, and pretend igno- 
rance of what every one knows and feels to be 
veritable truth ? Shall we prosecute this war 
on false pretences? Shall we even shrink 
from the discussion of slavery, or talk about it 
in circumlocutions, lest we give offence to 
rebels and their sympathizers ? 

I know it was not the purpose of this Admin- 
istration, at first, to abolish slavery, but only to 
save the Union, and maintain the old order of 
things. Neither was it the purpose of our 
fathers, in the beginning of the Revolution, to 
insist on independence. Before the first bat- 
tles were fought, a reconciliation could have 
been secured simply by removing the grievance 
which led to arms. But events soon prepared 
the people to demand absolute separation. 
Similar facts may tell the story ot the present 
struggle. In its beginning, neither the Ad- 
ministration nor the people foresaw its magni- 
tude, nor the extraordinary means it would 
employ in prosecuting its designs. The crisis 
has assumed new features as the war has pro- 
gressed. The policy of emancipation has 
been born of the circumstances of the rebel- 
lion, which every hour more and more plead 
for it. " Time makes more converts than 
reason." I believe the popular demand now 
is, or soon will be, the total extirpation of sla- 
very as the righteous purpose of the war, and 
the only means of a lasting peace. We should 
not agree, if it were proposed, to restore slavery 
to its ancient rights under the Constitution, and 
allow it a new cycle of rebellion and crime. 

The rebels have demanded a "reconstruc- 
tion " on the basis of slavery ; let us give them 
a " reconstruction " on the basis of freedom. 
Let us convert the rebel States into conquered 
provinces, remanding them to the status of 
mere Territories, and governing them as such 
in our discretion. Under no circumstances 
should we consent to end this struggle on 
terms that would leave us where we began it. 
To conclude the war by restoring slavery to 
the constitutional rights it has forfeited by 
treason, would be as unreasonable as putting 
out the fire, and turning loose the incendiary 
with torch in hand. It would be like re- 
instating the devil in Paradise, to re-enact his 
rebellion against the Most High. Sir, let us 
see to it, that out of this war shall come a per- 
manent peace to these States. Let us demand 
" indemnity for the past, and security for the 
future." The mere suppression of the rebel- 
lion will be an empty mockery of our suffer- 
ings and sacrifices, if slavery shall be spared 
to canker the heart of the nation anew, and 
repeat its diabolical deeds. No, sir. The old 



dispensation is past. It served us as a school- 
master, to bring us into a new and higher one, 
and we are now done with it forever. We 
determined, in 1860, that the domination of 
slavery should come to an end. The Govern- 
ment had long been drifting into its vortex, 
but we resolved, at whatever cost, to rescue it. 
Had we been satisfied with the rule of slavery, 
as it existed prior to the rebellion, we might 
have had peace to-day. We might have 
agreed to the election of Breckinridge. We 
might have avoided war, even after the election 
of Mr. Lincoln, by calling into his Cabinet the 
chief rebel conspirators, who would have been 
pacified by the spoils, while serving the behests 
of slavery. Having chosen a different course 
by the election of a man committed to a spe- 
cific anti-slavery policy, and having undertaken 
to execute that policy against all opposition, 
we are now shut up to the single duty of crush- 
in the rebellion at all hazards, and blasting, 
forever, the power that has called it into life. 

Mr. Chairman, our poicer to destroy slavery 
now, I believe, is not questioned. The law of 
nations applicable to a state of war takes from 
this rebel power every constitutional refuge it 
could claim in a time of peace. The principle 
is thus declared by the illustrious statesman 
whose authority I have already quoted respect- 
ing another topic : 

" I lay this down as the law of nations. I 
' say that the military authority takes, for the 
' time, the place of all municipal institutions, 
' slavery among the rest. Under that state of 
1 things, so far from its being true that the 
' States where slavery exists have the exclusive 
' management of the subject, not only the 
' President of the United States, but the Com- 
' mander of the army, has power to order the 
' universal emancipation of the slaves." 

And again : 

"From the instaut that your slaveholding 
' States become the theatre of war, civil, servile, 
' or foreign, from that instant the war powers 
' of Congress extend to interference with the 
1 institution of slavery, in every way in which 
' it can be interfered with, from a claim of in- 
' demnity for slaves taken or destroyed, to the 
' cestion of a Slate burdened with slavery to a 
' foreign Power." 

This, sir, is the grand weapon which the 
rebels have; placed in our hands, and we should 
use it as a matter of clear ami unhesitating 
duty. Not. that the Constitution is so absolutely 
perfect, or so entirely sacred, that we can in no 
event disregard it. The nation is greater than 
the Constitution} because it made the Constitu 
tion. We bad a country before we had a Con- 
stitution, and at all bazardf we musl .save it. 
The Con m i ade for the people, not 

the ]" opli [i - i be Constitution. < !ai i a tnaj 
arise in which patriotism itself me 
that we trample under our feet some ol the 
most vital principles of the Constitution, and 
this baa 1 ■■ .' i. done already by the present Ad- 



ministration, under the exigencies of the war. 

" Man is more than constitutions ; better rot beneath the 
sod, 
Than be true to Church and State, while we are doubly 
false to God. " 

But so far as emancipation is concerned, con- 
stitutional dificulties, if any existed, are no 
longer in the way, since the Constitution itself 
recognises the war power of the Government, 
which the rebels have compelled us to employ 
against them. They have sown the wind, now 
let them reap the whirlwind. We have leave 
to do what the great body of the people have 
hitherto excused themselves from doing, on the 
ground of impassable constitutional barriers, 
and our failure to act will be as criminal as the 
blessings of universal freedom would be price- 
less. " Man's liberty is God's opportunity." 
Not for all the wealth or honors of the universe 
should we now withhold our suffrage from the 
proposition to " proclaim liberty throughout all 
the land, to all the inhabitants thereof." Never, 
perhaps, in the history of any nation has so 
grand an occasion presented itself for serving 
the interests of humanity and freedom. And 
our responsibility, commensurate with our pow- 
er, canuot be evaded. As we are freed from 
all antecedent obligations, we should deal with 
this remorseless oligarchy as if we were now 
at the beginning of the nation's life, and about 
to lay the foundations of empire in these States 
for ages to come. Our failure to give freedom 
to four millions of slaves would be a crime only 
to be measured by that of putting them in 
chains if they were free. If we could fully 
grasp this idea, our duty would become at once 
plain and imperative. We wan;, not simply the 
military power to crush the rebellion, but the 
statesmanship that shall comprehend the crisis, 
and coin this " golden moment " into jewels of 
liberty aud peace, for the future glory of the 
Republic. 

Slavery, as I have already shown, has been 
the evil genius of the Government from its 
birth. It has frustrated the design of our 
fathers to form " a more perfect Union." It 
has made it impossible to "establish justice," 
or "to secure domestic tranquillity.'' It has 
weakened " the common defence" by inviting 
foreign attack. It has opposed the "general 
welfare" by its merciless aristocracy in human 
ilesh. It has denied us " the blessings of lib- 
erty," and given us its own innumerable curses 
instead. It has laid waste the fairest and most 
fertile half of the Republic, staying its progress 
in population, wealth, power, knowledge, civil- 
ization, the arts, and religion, thus heaping its 
burdens upon the whole nation, and costing us 
far more than the market value of all the mil- 
lions in bonds. It has made the establishment 
of free schools and a general system of educa- 
tion impossible. It has branded labor as dis- 
honorable and degrading. It has filled the 
ranks of infidelity, and brought religion itself 
into scorn, by bribing its professors to espouse 



9 



its revolting iniquity. It has laid its wizard 
hand upon the mightiest statesmen and most 
royal intellects of the land, and harnessed them, 
like beasts of burden, in its loathsome service. 
It has denounced the Declaration of Independ- 
ence as a political abomination, and dealt with 
our fathers as hypocrites, who affirmed its self- 
evident truths with a mental reservation, while 
appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world 
for the rectitude of their intentions. While 
spreading licentiousness, concubinage, and 
crime where it rules, it has lifted up its rebel 
voice in the name of the United States, in 
pleading the cause of despotism in every part 
of the civilized world. And, as the fitting cli- 
max of its career of lawlessness, it has aimed 
its dagger at the Government that has fostered 
and guarded its life, and borne with its evil 
deeds, for more than seventy years. Sir, this 
mighty rebel against all law, human and divine, 
is now within ou'* grasp, and we should strangle 
it forever. " New occasions teach new duties," 
and we should employ every weapon which the 
laws of war place within our reach in scourg- 
ing it out of life. Not to do so, I repeat, would 
be the most Heaven daring recreancy to the 
grand trust which the circumstances of the 
hour have committed to our hands. God for- 
bid that we should throw away this sublime oc- 
casion for serving his cause on earth, leaving 
our children to deplore our failure, as we to-day 
have to deplore the slighted opportunities of 
the past. 

Mr. Chairman, I have not referred, directly, 
to the question of humanity involved in the 
policy of crushing slavery by the war power. 
That subject has been considerably discussed 
before the country, and I do not propose to en- 
ter upon it here, beyond the incidental bearings 
of my argument. I waive none of my humani- 
tarian grounds of opposition to slavery, but I 
prefer to deal with the practical issues of the 
crisis. I am for putting down slavery as a 
" military necessity," and as the dictate of the 
highest statesmanship. The immediate ques- 
tion before the country is the suppression of the 
rebellion, and the common laws which govern 
a war between nations apply to the conduct of 
a civil war. These laws are thus laid down by 
Vattel : 

" Since the object of a just war is to repress 
' injustice and violence, and forcibly to cora- 
' pel him who is deaf to the voice of justice, 
' we have a right to put in practice against the 
' enemy every measure that is necessary in or- 
' der to weaken him, and disable him from re- 
' sisting us and supporting his injustice ; and 
4 we may choose such methods as are most effi- 
' cacious, and best calculated to attaiu the end 
' in view, provided they be not of an odious kind, 
' nor unjustifiable in themselves, and prohibit- 
' ed by the law of nature." 

Sir, I insist upon the application of this well- 
recognised principle of public law. That the 
overthrow of slavery " is necessary in order to 



weaken" the enemy, "and disable him from 
resisting us and supporting his injustice," will 
not be disputed. That it would be a measure 
" most efficacious and best calculated to attain 
the end in view," is equally clear. Nor would 
it be "odious" to restore four millions of slaves 
to their natural rights, or "unjustifiable" in it- 
self, or " prohibited by the law of nature." The 
friends of the Union need ask nothing more 
than the just application of the law of nations, 
and they certainly should be content with noth- 
ing less. 

A right to subdue the rebels carries with it a 
right to employ the means of doing it, and of 
doing it effectively, and with the least possible 
cost. If slavery had not been made a party 
question, and trained us to yield an unnatural 
deference to its assumptions, we should have 
laid violent hands upon it at once. The thought 
of tenderly sparing it would not have occurred 
to any loyal man. As the most vulnerable 
point of the rebels, we should naturally have 
aimed at it our first and hardest blows ; and I 
insist that we shall so far forget our party preju- 
dices, and the dread of "abolitionism," as to 
do what the dictates of common sense and a 
regard for our own safety so clearly demand. 
Facts, bloody and terrific, are every day prov- 
ing that slavery, or the Republic, must perish. 
As the animating principle of the rebellion, it 
stands between us and the Union, and we are 
compelled to smite it. To strike at it is to 
strike at treason ; and to favor it in any way, 
however unwittingly, is to take sides with the 
rebels. They cherish it as the most presious 
of all earthly blessings. They love it with all 
the force of a long-fostered community of feel- 
ing; and the assertion is well attested, that the 
loss of a slave by Northern agency excites more 
sudden and wide-spread indignation than would 
the murder of his master. 

Mr. Chairman, I need make no argument to 
prove that slavery is an element of positive 
strength to the rebels, unless we employ it in 
furthering our own cause. The slaves till the 
ground, and supply the rebel army with pro- 
visions. Those not fit to bear arms oversee the 
plantations. Multitudes can be spared for the 
army, since women overseers are as capable 
and trustworthy as men. Of the entire slave 
population of the South, according to the esti- 
mates of our last census returns, one million 
are males, capable of bearing arms. They can- 
not be neutral. As laborers, if not as soldiers, 
they will be the allies of the rebels, or of the 
Union. Count all the slaves on the side of 
treason, and we are eighteen millions against 
twelve millions. Count them on the loyal side, 
and we are twenty-two millions against eight. 
How shall this black power be wielded? A 
gentleman, occupying a very high official posi- 
tion, has said that it would be a disgrace to the 
people of the free States to call on four millions 
of blacks to aid in putting down eight millions 
of whites. Shall we then freely give the rebel- 



10 



lion four millions of allies, at the certain cost 
to us of many millions of money and many 
thousands of lives? And, if so, may we not as 
well reinforce the rebels with such portion of 
our own armies as will make the contest equal 
in numbers, and thus save our cause from "dis- 
grace?" )s the conduct of this war to be the 
only subject which requires men to discard 
reason and forget humanity? 

The rebels use their slaves in building forti- 
fications ; shall we not invite them to our lines, 
and employ them in the same business ? The 
rebels employ them in raising the provisions, 
without which their armies must perish ; shall 
we not entice them to join our standard, and 
thus compel the enemy to reinforce the planta- 
tion by weakening the army? The rebels em- 
ploy them as cooks, nurses, teamsters, and 
scouts ; shall we decline such services in order 
to spare slavery? The rebels organize regi- 
ments of black men, who shoot down our loyal 
white soldiers; shall we sacrifice our sons and 
brothers for the sake of slavery, refusing to 
put black men against black men, when the 
highest interests ot both white and black plead 
for it? In the battles of the Revolution, and in 
the war of 1812, slaves and free men of color 
fought with a valor unexcelled by white men. 
Are we afraid that a like honor to the colored 
man would be repeated, and thus testify against 
his enslavement ? I do not say that any gen- 
eral policy of arming the slaves should be 
avowed ; but that in some capacity, military or 
civil, according to the circumstances of each 
particular case, they should be used in the 
necessary and appropriate work of weakening 
the power of their owners. Under competent 
military commanders we may possibly be able 
to subdue the rebels without calling to our 
aid their slaves ; but have we a right to reject 
it, at the expense of prolonging the war, and 
augmenting its calamities? Is it a small thing 
to sacrifica unnecessarily the lives of our young 
and middle-aged men, the flower of the land, 
and rive with sorrow the hearts of friends and 
kindred? Can we afford a dollar of money, or 
a drop of blood, to spare the satanic power that 
has hatched this rebellion into life, and is now 
the sole barrier to our peace? 

Sir, when the history of this rebellion shall 
be written, its saddest pages will record the 
careful and studious tenderness of the Admin- 
istration towards American slavery. I say this 
with the sincerest regret. I do not doubt the 
good intentions of the President, nor would I 
forget the trying circumstances in which he 
and his advisers have been placed. Upon them, 
to a very great extent, must the hopes of our 
country rest in this crisis. To sustain their 
policy, wherever I can honestly do BO, us a Rep- 
resentative of the people, is my first duty; and 
my second is, frankly to point out its errors, 
whilst avoiding, if possible, the attitude ol an 
antagonist, instead of making slavery the 
special object of attack, as the weak point of 



the enemy, and the guilty cause of the war, the 
policy of the Administration has been that of 
perpetual deference to its claims. The Gov- 
ernment speaks of it with bated breath. It 
handles it with kid gloves. Very often has it 
spread its parental wing over it, as the object 
of its peculiar care. In dealing with the inter- 
ests of rebels, it singles out as its pet and fa- 
vorite, as the spared object of its love, the 
hideous monster that is at once the body, soul, 
and spirit of the movement we are endeavoring 
to subdue. While the rebels have trampled the 
Constitution under their feet, and pursued their 
purposes like Thugs and pirates, the Govern- 
ment has lost no opportunity of declaring that 
the constitutional rights of slavery shall be 
protected by loyal men. The Secretary of 
State, in his instructions to Mr. Adams, of 
the 10th of April last, says: 

" You will indulge in no expressions of harsh- 
' ness or disrespect, or even impatience, con- 
' cerning the seceded States, their agents, or 
' their people." 

And he warns Mr. Adams to remember that 
these States are, and must ever continue to be, 
" equal and honored members of this Federal 
Union," a'nd that their citizens " still are, and 
and always must be, our kindred and country- 
men." In his letter to Mr. Dayton, of April, 
22, he tells him that— 

'• The rights of the States, and the condition 
' of every human beingiu them, will remain sub- 
' ject to exactly the same laws and forms of 
' administration, whether the revolution shall 
' succeed or whether it shall fail ; their consti- 
' tutions and laws, customs, habits, and institu- 
' tions, in either case, will remain the same." 

In this he is followed by the President in 
his message of the 4th of July. In the letter 
just referred to, Mr. Seward even denies that 
any war exists between the loyal and disloyal 
States. Although in his letter to Mr. Clay, of 
May G, he admits that the object of this rebel- 
lion is to create a nation built upon the prin- 
ciple that African slavery is a blessing, to be 
extended over the continent at whatever cost 
or sacrifice, yet in his letter to Mr. Corwin, of 
April 6, he says : 

M The President does not expect that you will 
' allude to the origin or causes of our domestic 
'difficulties in your intercourse with the Gov- 
' ernment of Mexico." 

The Secretary of War has taken pains to say, 
with emphasis and reiteration, that — 

" This is a war for the Union, for the preser- 
' vatiou of all constitutional rights of States, 
' and the citizens of all the States of the Union." 

I believe the Attorney General has been 
equally emphatic, and that he has even insist- 
ed upon the enforcem int of the fugitive-slave 
act in Missouri, without any reference to the 
rebellion. The Secretary or the Interior, in a 
public speech iu August last, declared that — 

" This is not a war upon the institution of 
' slavery, but a war for the restoration of the 



11 



' Union and the protection of all citizens, in the 
' South as well as in the North, in their consti- 
' tutic nat rights." 

And he affirmed that — 

"There could not be found in South Carolina 
' a man more auxious, religiously and scrupu- 
' lously, to observe all the features of the Con- 
' stitution relating to slavery than Abraham 
' Lincoln." 

Both Houses of Congress, in July, chimed in 
with this chorus of loyal voices on the side of 
the assumed constitutional rights of rebels, and 
our innocence of any hostile designs toward 
them; while the wretched legislative blurder 
known as the confiscation act is a fruit of the 
same fastidious and gingerly policy. No one, 
certainly, should condemn the Government for 
defining its position truly and cautiously as to 
its purpose and policy respecting the rebellion ; 
but these never-ending platitudes about our 
kind intentions, and the constitutional rights 
of the scoundrels who have abdicated the Con- 
stitution and ceased to have any rights under 
it, shows how fearfully the power of slavery 
continues to mesmerize the conscience and 
manhood of our public men. 

To this strange deference to slavery must be 
referred the fact that such swarms of disloyal 
men have been retained iu the several Depart- 
ments of the Government, and that the spirit 
and energy of the war have been paralyzed 
from the beginning. To the same cause must 
we attribute the recent proclamations of Gen- 
eral Sherman and General Dix, and the humil- 
iating services of our armies in the capture 
and return of fugitive slaves. Again and 
aga : n have our commanders engaged in this 
execrable business, in disregard of the Consti- 
tution, and in defiance of all precedent. In 
numerous instances fugitives have been deliv- 
ered to rebel masters — an offence compounded 
of piracy and treason, which should have been 
punished with death. Our soldiers have not 
only been compelled to take upon them the du- 
ties specially and exclusively belonging to the 
officers of law, provided by the fugitive act of 
1850, but have been required to return fugitives 
when they had not passed out of the State in 
which they belonged, and where, of course, the 
law itself would furnish no remedy. Sir, our 
treatment of these fugitives has not only been 
disgraceful, but infamous. For the rebels, the 
Constitution has ceased to exist; but were it 
otherwise, it is neither the right nor the duty 
of our army to return their slaves. The Con- 
stitution deals with them as persons, and knows 
them only as loyal or disloyal. If they are dis- 
loyal, they are simply belligerents, and if found 
among us should no more be allowed to return 
than other rebels. If as loyal men they come 
to our lines, tendering us their aid, our com- 
manders who return them to their rebel claim- 
ants should be summarily crowned witti the 
honors of the gallows. I cannot now go into 
the history of the numerous cases in which offi- 



cers of our army have driven from our lines, or 
restored to their claimants, the slaves who have 
come within our jurisdiction, and whose infor- 
mation, had it been accepted, would have avert- 
ed some of the blood'est tragedies of the war; 
but I trust some painstaking gentleman will 
undertake this task, and perform it honestly 
and thoroughly, however damning the record 
may be to the parties concerned. 

The conduct, of the Administration towards 
General Fremont forms a kindred topic of crit- 
icism. When he proclaimed freedom to the 
slaves of rebels in Missouri, it was greeted with 
almost universal joy throughout the free States. 
The popular instinct at once recognised it as a 
blow struck at the heart of the rebellion. The 
order that rebels should be shot did not carry 
with it half the significance of this proclama- 
tion of freedom to their slaves. But the Presi- 
dent at once modified it, so far as its anti-sla- 
very features went beyond the confiscation act 
of July. He had no objection to the shooting 
of rebels, though it was as unwarranted by the 
act of Congress as the emancipation of their 
slaves. Their slave property must be held as 
more sacred than any other property; more sa- 
cred than their live3 ; more sacred even than 
the life of the Republic. Could any policy be 
more utterly suicidal? Slavery burns our 
bridges; poisons our wells; destroys the lives 
of our people ; fires our hospitals; murders our 
wounded soldiers ; lays waste the country ; turns 
pirate on the'^sea; confiscates our property of 
every description ; arms with butcher-knives and 
tomahawks the savages of the Southwest as its 
allies; deals with our institutions with remorse- 
less fury; and, in short, inundates the land 
with the villainies and crimes born of its devil- 
ish rule over these States; but when General 
Fremont declares that the slaves of rebels in 
arms against us within his military jurisdiction 
shall be free, the President — no doubt with the 
best of motives, but as if determined to give all 
the aid in his power to the rebellion — counter- 
mands the proclamation. He says he does this 
" most cheerfully." 

The rebels may be shot, but while they keep 
up the fight against us their slaves shall sup- 
ply them with provisions, without which their 
armies must, perish and the lives of loyal men 
might be spared. The confiscation act bribes 
all the slaves of the South to murder our peo- 
ple, and the President refuses to allow the war 
power to go beyond it. The effect is, that if 
the slaves' engage in the war at all, they must 
do so as our enemies, while, if they remain at 
home on their plantations, in the business of 
feeding the rebel army, they will have the pro- 
tection both of the loyal and confederate gov- 
ernments. Sir, is not this a practical espousal 
of the rebellion by the Administration ? When 
both parties to this struggle agree in subordi- 
nating the Union to slavery, is it not time for 
the people to speak? When the country is 
pouring out its treasure in streams that threat- 



12 



en it with financial ruin, and periling the lives 
of hundreds of thousands of our picked men to 
save the Republic, can we endure a policy so 
fatal to our success and so merciless in its re- 
sults? It is known that General Fremont's 
proclamation was modified to accommodate the 
loyal slaveholders of Kentucky ; but what right, 
I ask, had the loyal men of that State to com- 
plain if the disloyal men of Missouri forfeited 
their slaves by treason ? If pretended loyal 
men in Kentucky or elsewhere value slavery 
above the Union, then they are not loyal, and 
the attempt to make them so by concessions 
will be vain. A conditional Union man is no 
Union man at all. Loyalty must be absolute. 
"If the Lord be God, serve him ; but if Baal, 
serve him." There can be no middle ground. 
This, as I have said, is a war between the 
Government and slavery, and no man can 
really serve these two masters at the same 
time. 

To this dread of offending slavery must be 
charged our loss of the sympathy and respect 
of the civilized world. We have no true battle- 
cry. We are fighting only for the Union, and 
taking pains to tell mankind that this does not 
mean liberty. We are the champions of " law 
and order," and by giving foreign nations to 
understand that we are making common cause 
with the rebels for slavery, or at least doing 
nothing to oppose it, we justify Lord John Rus- 
sell in saying that this is simply "a war for inde- 
pendence on the part of the South, and for 
power on the part of the North." On the 
other hand, by assuming the attitude of revo- 
lutionists, the rebels appeal successfully to the 
sympathy of the millions in the Old World 
who love liberty, and whose zealous espousal 
of our cause could be secured by writing 
Freedom on our bauner. Thus slavery mur- 
ders our cause at home and invites hostility 
from abroad. According to Mr. Grattau, late 
British consul at Boston, the demand for 
emancipation by our Government "would ring 
in the ears of all England like an alarm 
bell, and stir the depths of popular feeling 
with the fervor of the Reformation, or the 
fanaticism of the Crusades." This is probably 
overstated, but is by no means wholly wanting 
in truth. I believe it was Daniel Webster who 
declared that public opinion is the mightiest 
power on earth. '1 his power, to day, is against 
us, through the timid and feeble policy we 
have pursued in dialing with the slave-breed- 
ers of the South. England has insulted us, 
and we are still in imminent peril of a foreign 
war, because slavery lias palsied the arm of the 
Government, allowed it to otter no spirit-stirring 
word, balked tl . to of the people, be- 

littled the issue involved in our struggle, and 
held in fatal inactivity for months past our 
eager and bro i j, who would have 

brought tiiis i. bell ion to an end err to-day b hI 
they been i to march against the 

enemy under competent commanders. The 



Government, taking counsel of its fears, has not 
dared to adopt a just policy, for fear of aliena- 
ting its own pretended friends. The mistake 
of swerving the whole management of the war 
from its true course, in order to accommodate 
the equivocal loyalty of the border States, has 
brought the country to the very brink of ruin. 
It prevented, at first, the adoption of those 
bold and vigorous measures which might have 
strangled the rebellion before its birth, and is 
still protracting the struggle and sporting with 
our opportunities of success. Sir, our policy 
must be changed, radically and speedily, if we 
mean to be in earnest. We must let the world 
know that this is not a struggle for slavery in 
the border States, but for liberty and republi- 
canism, and thus enlist the millions in the 
Old World in our cause, by fighting their 
battle as well as our own. If we fail to do 
this, and continue to carry on the war on the 
principle of " how not to do it," our grand 
armies will continue idle, our means of carry- 
ing on the war will be exhausted, the spirit of 
the people will at last give way, the power of 
the rebels will increase, foreign wars will be 
inevitable, and the cause of free government 
throughout the world will find a common grave 
with the institutions of our fathers. 

Mr. Chairman, the time has come for us to 
deal with the actual and stern facts of our 
condition. We must cease to regard the rebels 
as misguided men, whose infatuation is to be 
deplored, whilst we still hope to bring them to 
their senses. We must cease our attacks upon 
the strong points only of the enemy, whilst we 
fail to strike at the weak ones, and madly hope 
to woo them back to a sense of their folly and 
crime. We must abandon, entirely, the delu- 
sion that rebels aad outlaws have any rights 
under the Constitution, and deal with them as 
rebels and outlaws. No men since the world 
was made were ever more in earnest. They 
hate us supremely. The rattlesnake is the 
fitly-chosen symbol of their black confederacy. 
Their wrath is a desolating lire. The felt con- 
sciousness that they are in the wrong, and that 
we have for so many long years been the vic- 
tims of their injustice, animates them with the 
fury of devils. They despise us all the more 
for every appeal we make to their sense of 
justice and fair play. They regard our free 
labor and free institutions with unutterable 
abhorrence. If they had the power they would 
exterminate us from the face of the earth. 
They have, turned loose to prey upon the Re- 
public the transmitted vices and diabolisms of 
two hundred years, and sooner than fail in 
their struggle they would light up Heaven 
itself with the red glare of the pit, and convert 
the earth into a carnival of devils. They 
have a mighty army, led by some of the ablest 
commanders in the world, and nerved for 
bloody deeds by all the power of desperation. 

Sir, in such a contest we can spare no pos- 
: Lble advantage. We want no war " conducted 



13 



on peace principles." Every weapon within 
our reach must be grasped. Every arrow in 
our quiver must be sped towards the heart of 
a rebel. Every obstacle in the path of our 
conquering hosts must be trodden down. War 
means ruin, destruction, death — and Joyal slave- 
holders, and loyal non-slaveholders must stand 
out of the way, in this tremendous encounter 
with the assassins of liberty and free govern- 
ment. All tenderness toward such a foe is 
treason to our cause, murder to our people, 
faithlessness to the grandest and holiest trust 
ever committed to a free people. The policy 
for which I plead, sooner or later, must be 
adopted, if the rebels are to be mastered, and 
every delay puts in peril the precious interests 
for which we fight. Let us act at once, putting 
forth all our power. Let the war be made just 
as terriffic to the rebels as possible, consistently 
with the laws of war. This will be at once a 
work of mercy, and the surest means of our 
triumph. Let us hot mock the Almighty by 
waiting till we are forced by needless calam- 
ities to do what shouldjjbe done at once, as the 
dictate alike of humanity and policy ; for it 
may happen, when this rebellion shall have 
hung crape on one hundred thousand doors in 
the free States, that a ruined country will tauut 
us with the victory which might have been ours, 
and leave us only the poor consolation of bitter 
and unavailing regrets. 

Mr. Chairman, the sweeping policy I would 
have the Government adopt towards slavery, 
will be objected to on the ground of its injus- 
tice towards the loyal slaveholders of the South. 
To this objection I have several replies to 
make. 

In the first place, I would pay to every loyal 
slave claimant, on due proof of loyalty, the fairly- 
assessed value of his slaves. I would not do this 
as compensation, for no man should receive pay 
for robbing another of his earnings, and plun- 
dering him of his humanity ; but as a means of 
facilitating a settlement of our troubles, and 
securing a lasting peace, I would tax the pub- 
lic Treasury to this extent. From the begin- 
ning, slavery has been an immense pecuniary 
burden, and we can well afford to pay the 
amount which this policy would impose, for the 
sake of getting rid of that burden forever. 

In the next place, I reply that the total ex- 
tirpation of slavery will be our only security 
against future trouble and discord. By any 
sacrifice, and by all possible means, should we 
now guard against a repetition of the scenes 
through which we have been called to pass. If 
we will heed the lesson of experience, we can- 
not go astray. Our fathers were very sure they 
had opened a vein that would speedily bleed 
slavery to death ; but this rebellion is 
the bloody witness of their mistake. Shall 
we not profit by the lesaon? It may be that, 
if the slaves of rebels are set free, slavery itself 
will fall. I do not believe it. The assertion 
has neither fact nor philosophy to sustain it. 



No man, at any rate, knows it to be true; and 
for this reason, having now the power, we 
should foreordain the blessed fact which else 
may never come to pass. We have no right, 
certainly, to expose the future glory and peace 
of our country even to remote hazard, if we 
hold in our hands ihe power to prevent it. 

I reply further: that, while loyal slaveholders 
may dislike exceedingly to part with their 
slaves, and still more to give up their cherished 
institution, yet the hardship of their case is not 
peculiar. This rebellion is placing heavy bur- 
dens upon all loyal men. At whatever cost, 
and at all hazards, it must be put down. This 
is the principle on which we must act. Ac- 
cordingly, the State which I, in part, represent, 
has not only done her full share in the way of 
means to carry on the war, but has placed in 
the field on e-twe«tieth part of her entire popula- 
tion. She will be ready to make still further sac- 
rifice3 when they shall be demanded. Neither 
our property nor the lives of our people will be 
counted too precious for an offering. If loyal 
slaveholders are as patriotic as ioyal non-slave- 
holders, they will be equally ready to make 
sacrifices. Education and habit have wedded 
them to the system of slavery, which, for three 
quarters of a century, has been preying upon 
the nation's life, and at last ha3 ripeued into 
the fruitage of civil war. They cannot demand 
of the millions of non-slaveholders, North and 
South, that this evil element shall be continued. 
As loyal men they cannot ask us to sacrifice the 
greater to the less, but in order to save the ship 
of State, should agree that slavery shall be 
thrown into the sea. 

I reply, finally, that if the war is to be con- 
ducted on the policy of fully accommodating the 
wishes of loyal slaveholders, that policy will be 
found impracticable, and therefore need not be 
attempted. Loyal slaveholders on this floor 
vote to give the rebels the benefit of the fugi' 
tive-slave act of 1850 in recapturing their 
slaves. They vote also that our loya,l soldiers 
shall volunteer as the slavehouuds of rebels in 
the same villainous employment. Loyal slave- 
holders in both ends of this Capitol oppose the 
emancipation of the slaves of rebels, and pub- 
licly declare that such a measure would con- 
solidate the people of the South as one man 
against the Union. They do not conceal the 
fact that they regard slavery as paramount to 
the Union. Sir, I shall most certainly refuse 
to go that length. On the contrary, the duty 
I learn from the position of these men ia that 
of demolishing every vestige of slavery in the 
land. Since I cannot possibly accommodate 
them, and must give offence, I prefer to divide 
with them on principle, and extricate my con- 
science and self-respect entirely from the thral- 
dom of a false position. I do not stop to in- 
quire how many will agree with me, because I 
am not willing "to put duty to the vote; " and 
while I am ready to support any measure giv- 
ing freedom only to the slaves of rebels, I must 



14 



not fail to stand by my own convictions, while 
leaving the wisdom or the folly of my position 
to be tried by the ordeal of time. 

I must not conclude, Mr. Chairman, without 
noticing a further objection to the policy for 
which I contend. I refer to the alleged danger 
of this policy, and the disposition of the slaves 
after they shall be free. This objection, like 
the one just considered, invites several an- 
swers. 

First, if I am right in dealing with the rebel- 
lion as the child of slavery, and in arguing that 
the salvation of the Republic demands its over- 
throw, then my position is fully sustained. It 
will not do to talk about consequences, for no 
possible consequences of emancipation could 
be worse than destroying the Government and 
subverting our free institutions. Do you ask 
me if I would "turn the slaves loose?" I re- 
ply, that this rebellion, threatening to desolate 
our land with the grandest assemblage of hor- 
rors ever witnessed on earth, is not the conse- 
quence of " turning the slaves loose," hut of 
holding them in chains. Do you ask me what 
I would do with these liberated millions? I 
answer by asking what they will do with us if 
we insist on keeping them in bondage? Do 
you tell me that if the slaves are set free they 
will rise against their former masters, and pil- 
lage and lay waste the South ? I answer, that 
all that, should it happen, would be far less de- 
plorable than a struggle like this, involving the 
existence of a free nation of thirty millions of 
people, and the hope of the civilized world. If, 
therefore, our policy is to be determined by the 
question of consequences, the argument is 
clearly on the side of universal freedom. 

I reply, in the second place, that emancipa- 
tion will be wise, safe, and profitable, to both 
master and slave. In this assertion I am sus- 
tained by all history and experience relating to 
the question. Most triumphantly can I refer 
to the case of the British West Indies. There, 
by an act of legislation, nearly a million of 
slaves within those narrow islands, and greatly 
outnumbering the white population, were in an 
instant made free. No act of violence followed. 
No white man suffered in person or estate by 
reason of emancipation. In the island of Ja- 
maica thirty insurrections occurred in the cen- 
tury which preceded emancipation, but not one 
has occurred since. If experience has estab- 
lished any fact, it is, that violence and crime 
on the part of the negro race are not the con- 
comitants of freedom, but the offspring of sla- 
very, and that the chief difliculty in the way of 
emancipation has always been the unfitness of 
the master. The history of emancipation in 
the French dominions, in South America, in 
the Danish West Indies, in Mexico, and in the 
West India colonies of the Dutch, will furnish 
concurrent testimony with that of the British 
West Indies as to the safety and profitableness 
of emancipation. It has been followed by gen- 
eral prosperity, and in the English and Danish 



West Indies, especially, the slaves have become 
landholders, schools have been established, ex- 
ports have increased, happiness has been pro- 
moted, and progress has become a law. 

I answer, next, that if the slaves of the South 
are set free-they will not be pent up within the 
confines of a few small islands, like those sub- 
jected to the great British experiment referred 
to. They occupy a country stretching between 
two oceans, vast portions of which are yet a 
wilderness. There is not only abundant room 
for them, but abundant need of their labor. 
They are not unfamiliar with industrial pur- 
suits, and if compensated for their labor, and 
acted upon by the renovating power of kind- 
ness, they will not only take care of themselves, 
but become a mighty element of wealth in the 
latitudes of our country peculiarly suited to 
their constitution. Their local attachments are 
remarkable, and but for slavery they would not 
be found either in Canada or the Northern 
States. But I would give them freedom, and 
then leave them to the law of their condition. 
Let them work out their own destiny, and let 
them have fair play in fighting the battle of 
life. Colonization is one of the great tidal forces 
of modern civilization, and the enslaved races 
can scarcely escape the appeal it will make to 
their approving judgment. Hayti, near our 
shores, stretches forth her hands to welcome 
them to happy homes among a kindred people, 
where they can enjoy the blessing of equal 
rights. Remove slavery, and I believe the ne- 
gro race among us will naturally gravitate to- 
wards a centre of its own, and separate itself 
from the race of its former oppressors. Our 
prejudices, borrowed from slavery, and still 
continuing to hold their sway, may aid this re- 
sult; but if from any cause whatever these peo- 
ple should seek their welfare in other lands, I 
would, while leaving them perfectly free in this 
respect, encourage them by all the reasonable 
means in our power. 

Lastly, to the assumed danger and impracti- 
cability of emancipation, I reply in the words 
of Dr. Channing: 

" It is an impious error to suppose that injus- 
' tice is a necessity under the government of 
' the Most High. It is disloyalty to principle, 
' treachery to virtue, to suppose that a righte- 
' ous, generous work, conceived in a sense of 
' duty, and carried on with deliberate fore- 
' thought, can issue in misery, in ruin. To this 
' want of faith in rectitude, society owes its 
' woes ; owes the licensed crimes and frauds of 
' statesmen; the licensed frauds of trade; the 
' continuance of slavery. Once let men put 
' faith in rectitude — let them feel that justice 
' is strength — that disinterestedness is a sun 
4 and a shield — that selfishness and crime are 
' weak and miserable — and the face of the earth 
' would be changed ; the groans of ages would 
' cease." 

This, sir, is the impregnable ground on which 
I stand. God has not closed up the paths of 



15 



justice and mercy among men. He has not 
permitted a remediless evil. As I reject athe- 
ism, so do I believe it safe to restore to our en- 
slaved millions the title-deeds of their freedom ; 
safe to give them a fair day's wages for a fair 
day's work ; safe to recognise their rights of 
marriage and the sacredness of the family; 
safe to allow them the untrammeled use of their 
powers of mind and body in the pursuit of their 
own highest good. And, I add, that the most 
deplorable sign of our times is the fact that the 
denial of all this is made the basis of our policy, 
and the test of our statesmanship. Very many 
of our public men practically : disown the moral 
government of the world. Expediency is the 
law of their lives. They lack faith in the al- 
mightiness of truth and the profitableness of 
duty. With them diplomacy and crookedness 
seem to be innate qualities, and it soinetmes 



unfortunately happens that men are found in 
high places of power and trust while scoffing at 
virtue and wallowing in corruption. 

Sir, in this season of great national trial we 
can only hope for the smiles of our Maker, 
through the recognition of liberty, justice, and 
humanity by those who wield the great and re- 
sponsible powers of Government. 

" God give us men! A time like this demands 
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and ready hands ; 
Men whom the lust of office does not kill ; 
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy ; 
Men who possess opinion and a will ; 
Men who have honor — men who -will not lie ; 
Men who can stand 'before a demagogue, 
And damn his treacherous liatteries without winking ; 
Tall men. sun-crowned, who live above the fog 
In public duty, and in private thinking. 
For while the ratole, with their thumb-screw creeds, 
Mingio in selfish strife, lo ! freedom weeps, 
Wrong rules the land, and waiting justice sleeps." 



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